The World of Bots and Why Lawyers Should Use Them

June 1, 2016•33 min

More than 50 percent of internet searches today is not done by humans but rather by bots. What exactly are bots and how can industry professionals use them to improve the practice of law? In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss bots and how attorneys can utilize them to improve their everyday lives. Tom explains that bots, short for web or internet robots, are applications that run automated software or scripts over the internet. This software can do relatively simple things but much faster than any human can. Dennis talks about search engines employing specific bots, known as spiders or crawlers, that read website pages and other information to create entries for their indexes. Both hosts then discuss cutting edge uses for bots like Microsoft’s Tay, an artificial intelligence chatterbot created for Twitter, and how attorneys can use simple bots for everyday tasks like creating stand-up meetings, checking deposition schedules, or aggregating case information. They then close the first half of the show by analyzing the use of customer service bots by lawyers and Tom provides some of his concerns that clients may be misled by not understanding when the bot interaction stops and the human interaction begins. In the second half of the podcast, Dennis and Tom reflect on their time at ABA TECHSHOW 2016. Dennis shares that he thinks the most interesting things that happen at conferences occur at dinners, in the halls, and at events like LexBlog and The ABA Journal’s Beer for Bloggers event. Tom views TECHSHOW as a great educational service to lawyers, providing them with resources that matter, and reveals that he would like to attend more panels than he was able to attend at this year’s conference. As always, stay tuned for Parting Shots, that one tip, website, or observation you can use the second the podcast ends. Special thanks to our sponsor, ServeNow.